“We have three and four hour meetings on this and it’s mind-numbing,” he said. “You come out and your head hurts.”

Sen. Anna Fairchild wondered if we should front-end the retirement money or flat-pay it over time.

“We want our retirees that have been promised benefits to feel secure,” she said.

According to Dyson, most of the 20,000 state employees are doing a good job.

“Most of the bad decisions are made by the government. The employees are the good folks,” he said.

It is, he added, a classic dilemma: Does the state pay down the debt or manage the money in hopes of making more money off of it.

It’s a tough decision, he said, shaking his head.

Saddler took the floor to talk about the proposed gas pipeline and LNG (liquefied natural gas) project.

“The stakes are high for us,” he said.

Gas is expensive to process, and yet it’s a necessity he feels we must take.

“The world is changing and we’re trying to keep up with it,” he said.

Stoltze brought the discussion around to educational funding. Currently, the state spends 70 percent of its budget on welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and education.

“We talk about cutting back on the budget but you can only cut from the remaining 30 percent,” he said.

Once the cuts begin, it doesn’t take you long before they slice into essential programs such as snow plowing, police, etc..

“Some say, ‘I don’t care where the money comes from.’ But we can’t print money or make oil prices go up,” he said.

Dyson had a more colorful analogy.

“Any politician who gets up, beats his chest and says he’s going to save the budget is talking out of the end of his mouth,” he said.

During the public testimony portion of the meeting residents commented on everything from education cutbacks to HB 278 (increasing the base of student allocation and repealing the exit exam) and the proposed Eklutna monofill.

Rep. Lora Reinbold was absent from the meeting due to family medical concerns.

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